FDD

A floppy disk drive, also called FDD or FD for short, is a computer disk drive that enables a user to save data to removable diskettes. Although 8" disk drives were first made available in 1971, the first real disk drives used were the 5 1/4" floppy disk drives, which were later replaced with the 3 1/2" floppy disk drives.

A 5 1/4" floppy disk was capable of storing between 360 KB and 1.2 MB of data, and the 3 1/2" floppy disk was capable of storing between 360 KB and 1.44 MB of data. For both floppy disk sizes, the data storage limit was dependent on two factors.

·         Single or double sided disk

·         Regular or high density disk

An example of each of the different floppy drives is pictured below. As can be seen, the size of the floppy drive and the diskettes they use have decreased over time.

What drive letter is the floppy disk drive?

If a floppy disk drive is installed in a computer, the drive letter associated with it is the A: drive. You can find the A: drive in My Computer or in the File Explorer.

What replaced floppy diskettes and floppy drives?

Today, due to their extremely limited capacity, computers no longer come equipped with floppy disk drives. This technology has largely been replaced with CD-R, DVD-R, and flash drives.